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GLASS IN A FLASH: Short Overview of Glass in Sandwich : page3

The final years of the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company saw a number of economic and labor problems, but the superintendent, Henry Francis Spurr, was committed to the factory and its workers, and tried to keep the factory afloat. However in 1887, the glass workers union called for a national strike. In sympathy, the Sandwich workers also went on strike. This event ultimately forced the company to put out the furnaces in 1888. The closure of the company caused a severe economic depression, forcing people to leave Sandwich or turn to other professions or jobs.

Soon after the closure of the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company, many other New England companies were closed from Maine to Connecticut.

In1888, several remaining glass workers created a new glass company and attempted to restart the glass industry in Sandwich. The Sandwich Co-operative Glass Company, 1888-1891, produced simple items as this spatter bell and oil lamp.

Other attempts were made to re-establish glassmaking in the old factory buildings. Two incarnations also called themselves the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company, and the last one produced a souvenir light bulb among their wares in 1904.

The last glass company to occupy the old factory buildings was the Alton Mfg. Co. in 1907. They produced an art glass called Trevaise, which was created by a former Sandwich and Tiffany & Company glassblower. But this venture too was short-lived because of the owner, Cardenio King, absconded with the funds from the first season of production.

In the 1890s, former glass cutters Nehemiah Packwood and John Vodon each set-up their own cutting shops in East Sandwich and produced intricate rich cut glass designs on imported lead blanks.

By the 1920s, the entire glass industry in Sandwich had come to a complete halt. The factory buildings were slowly torn down and dismantled. By 1944, there was barely a trace of a factory building near the marsh.

But the mantle of Sandwich's glass industry was absorbed by The Sandwich Historical Society. Founded in 1907, The Sandwich Historical Society had its first glass exhibit in 1925 commemorating a century of Sandwich glass. They produced many other exhibitions and came to focus primarily on interpreting the glass industry of the town in its Sandwich Glass Museum, yet still collecting the historical material of Sandwich's past.

However, plenty of traces of the glass company did remain - in the form of glass fragments. Serious glass collectors, tourists and artisans sought these small treasures in the marshes and on the beaches. Hazel Blake French and Nina Sutton were jewelry designers who polished the glass fragments to look like jewels and designed settings for them.

Now, the Sandwich Glass Museum has decided to "Relight the fires in Sandwich" with a glass furnace and new exhibits to better tell the story of the glass industry in Sandwich. While we will not be able to completely recreate that booming, smoking glass factory, our visitors are able to feel the heat from the glory hole on their faces. They can watch the glassblower turn and twist the hot glass into wonderful forms, and visions of those former days will not be so difficult to understand or imagine.